


The Day The World Went Away

by wordsliketeeth



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Angst, Asphyxiation, Blood and Gore, Bondage, Canonical References, Character Study, Child Abandonment, Coming of Age, Cutting, Exhibitionism, F/M, Female Reader, Gen, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, Implied/Referenced Incest, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Masturbation, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Near Death Experiences, Non-Graphic Smut, Original Character Death(s), Psychological Trauma, Sadomasochism, Scarification, Sex Club, Violence, bdsm situations, building relationships, graphic depictions of mental illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 11:52:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16912359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordsliketeeth/pseuds/wordsliketeeth
Summary: "The thrill of crime had finally ground itself out in my blood, fizzled down to a final spark before snuffing itself out entirely. It wasn't surprising, I'd seen it coming for a while. I'd moved onto greater things: namely destroying people, both literally and figuratively. I'd created my own fight club of sorts, a perilous web that spun out into several directions, each leading to a greater demise than the last. I'd drawn blood and broken bones—destroyed friendships and devastated relationships. Whatever I could do to dispose of the cretins and the morons that existed within my reach, the trash that littered the streets that I now called my own; I would use anything I could to annihilate the honest and the respectable, the good. I wanted to tear them down, to grind their lily-white souls into the dirt with my bootheels." Hanamiya Makoto tries to find his place in the world and gets lost along the way.





	The Day The World Went Away

**Author's Note:**

> This is my personal take on why Hanamiya Makoto is the way he is canonically. It's not a typical reader story in that reader doesn't show up until the end of the story. Thank you for reading!

The summer I was nine years old, my father took me on a job with him for the first time. He was an assassin for the Yakuza but I didn’t know it at the time, which left me to wonder why he came home bloodied and sometimes injured; but I always had a fascination with blood, so to me, I had the coolest father in the world and all of the kids at my elementary school could kiss my ass.

I still remember that day as if it’s imprinted on my memory, a picture nailed to the obscurity right behind my eyes. All I have to do is hand myself over to temporary darkness and I can envision two shadows: one being my father, the other a faceless man that I never cared to learn the name of. I can picture the deep, clean line of red drawn across the man’s throat, a perfect slash, cut with master precision that only my father was capable of. The glint of a silver blade—the same knife I carry with me to this day—sliced through the air, tracing the incision’s border, _just to be safe_ , my father would say. I could almost _hear_ the slosh of blood that poured down the white of the man’s shirt. I could make out the slide of metal against skin and the guttural _gulp,_ an attempt at breathing that nameless couldn’t manage for the damage scarring the line of his throat.

I watched as all life left nameless’ eyes, hollow and dark, black like beetles shining under the soft glow of candlelight. He was slouched at an angle on the floor that would be nearly impossible for any living person to mimic. The cold cement glistened with his blood and I remember wishing that my father would have eviscerated him. I wanted to see more. I wanted to see exposed organs, a mass of guts that would coil on the ground like the cooked onions my mother would mix with zucchini, sesame seeds, and teriyaki sauce. I wanted to witness that in which I knew my father had seen so many times before.

I watched nameless until the bleeding slowed to a mere trickle, sliding down his neck to disappear behind the stained collar of his shirt. I stepped toward him, waiting for my father to draw me back. He didn’t. Instead, he watched me with a curious expression, one that I caught in a brief glimpse as I looked at him over my shoulder. It was too dark to see, to know for sure, but I think he nodded in a gesture of encouragement.

My hand was steady as I reached out toward nameless, my fingers unshaken as I traced the deep lines carved into his throat. When I withdrew my fingers they were sticky and warm and smelled of rust and copper. I wanted to probe deeper inside the wound, to pry my fingers under the split skin and let nameless draw me into his damp warmth. I didn’t try.

For a second, I couldn’t help but wonder how many times my father had done this. How many lives he’d taken, with what weapons, and which was his favorite? I had an endless slew of questions aggregated in a repository inside my overactive mind, each inquiry packed tightly together like sardines in a tin can, but for some reason, I never spoke them aloud. Instead, I let my father marshal the conversation as he guided me from the room. _The cleaners will be coming soon_ , he told me.

I wanted to stay and watch. To pin my eyes on nameless’ body as they lifted him from the bloodied grit and stuffed him into whatever container was used for the disposal of _bad men—_ that’s what my father called them then. I shuffled forward hesitantly, the same sticky warmth that was coating my fingers pressing hotly against the back of my neck.

I went home and marched straight down the hall. My mother wasn’t home yet so I ignored my father’s command to take a bath and locked myself inside my room. I pushed my pants down to my knees and slipped a hand into my briefs.

I didn’t know what it meant then, but when I finished my hand was slick and I had to stumble on shaky legs to make it into the bathroom.

Back then my mother thought it was the start of my undoing but something in my anamnesis tells me that she’s wrong. That day might have been the catalyst, the impetus that sparked my innate interest, but the darkness that burrowed beneath my skin like a tick buried in hide existed long before I witnessed nameless’ death.

On that day, I was baptized in bloody water and crucified by what I was raised to believe. 

* * *

The following winter I watched my father kill two more men. The operation was almost motionless, was as simple as sliding his favorite kitchen knife through the wagyu beef he’d buy for Saturday nights. I watched them as they watched me, dressed as a charcoal sketch, my hair as black as the ink my mother spilled on our dining table. My father would stroke my cheek at times, telling me that I reminded him of something out of a fairy tale—hair black as ebony and skin white as snow—then he’d laugh and card his fingers through my hair like a warm brush. _Something tells me that you’ll be the one doing the poisoning though_ , he’d said. I didn’t know what it meant but I’d smiled at him anyway and licked a smear of blood off my lips—I had a terrible habit of biting them to bruised peeling back then.

I knew that my father had no way of knowing what I’d thought the previous summer when he disemboweled two men as easily as he’d gut a fish, spilling their intestines onto the thin sheet of snow that blanketed the ground. I felt warm, like something sticky sweet was spilling down the length of my spine and seeping into the low of my belly. I felt like my father had done it for me, like he was putting on a special show, a secret shared between just the two of us.

It was fascinating to me that he always seemed to know what I was thinking.

I had watched those men fall to their knees as if they were bowing down to me before death wrapped his bony arms around them in sequence, carrying them off to some plane unbeknownst to us. I waited for him to come. I wanted to _see_ him. I wanted to know what Pale Death looked like. I wanted to know if he would speak or simply let his breath rattle like a broken church bell beyond repair. Furthermore, I wanted to ask for his autograph.

He never came, at least, I didn’t see him if he did. The sky had turned to a milky pink—tinged with gray and deep purple—and as I turned my head up toward the vault of heaven, snow began to fall in methodical specks. I narrowed my eyes and stuck out my tongue, wondering if I was tasting torn pieces of confetti or the damp remains of some parasitic god.

I spared a final glance at the mass of meat on the ground—blood spilled from their open wounds and their organs wriggled, moving like a swarm of eels. I pressed two fingers to my lips and blew them a kiss. “ _Fuckers_.”

I don’t know if I was more angry with death or the god I dreamed up at that moment, but I abandoned the scene scratching at my skin like a rash on the back of a mangy dog. I had no real purpose for doing so, but the blood that rose to the surface of my flaking skin comforted me.

For all one knows, maybe I foresaw what lied in waiting when I returned back home to my mother. 

* * *

It took until the middle of spring for me to acknowledge my mother’s presence. We hadn’t spoken since she dumped all of my father’s belongings onto our front lawn and shouted at him to leave. I should say, I hadn’t spoken to _her_. She tried to talk to me but I couldn’t forgive her for making the sole decision to steal my father away from me.

It was early morning when I left despite her telling me I wasn’t to go into town by myself. I had taken on the new hobby of local store theft, which is what got me banned from going downtown alone in the first place. I had been careful but not careful enough. I had generated a wealth of books, clothes, and enough electronics to dub me a juvenile offender had I been caught by anyone _other_ than my mother. And I didn’t expect _her_ to notice but she did—which in turn, facilitated an argument about personal space and a _fuck you_ that earned me a mouthful of soap-spiked vinegar.

I didn’t steal because I needed the items, even so, we had money and plenty of it. It was just something I was exceedingly good at and I thought if I could get something for free, why pay for it? Still and all, the innocence that I had bled was obviously starting to show. Not that I really cared. Crime was getting as stale as the city we were living in and it was getting harder to scrub the dog piss and smoke out of the secondhand clothes that I frequently stole from my favorite thrift store.

It was afternoon by the time I walked into the house that I shared with my mother. I didn’t hide the fact that I’d gone against her word. I didn’t creep into the house with my head lowered in shame or an apology ready on my lips. Instead, I waltzed inside, my head held high and a smug smile on my mouth as if to say _yeah, what are you gonna do about it?_

I was expecting an argument but my mother just stood beneath the weight of the sun’s rays spilling across her skin, the window at her back created a halo of white around the same spill of ink I had on my own head. She stared at me for a long moment, her skin as pale as the vanilla cream that sat on the kitchen table to her right. She chewed on her bottom lip, and at that moment, I realized how much I’d inherited from her—though, I’d gotten my father’s violent eyes.

She opened her mouth and I clutched my hands into fists, ready with an arsenal of threats and insults to throw back at her, but my mother didn’t speak. Rather, she exhaled a breathless sob that shook through her entire frame. I stood stock-still and watched as she clutched the back of a dining chair—its design something I’d always loathed—to keep herself upright.

 _I don’t want to lose you_ , she said, tears streaking the unhealthy pallor of her cheeks. I saw the purple bruises beneath her eyes, thumbprints of insomnia pressed into her skin from lack of rest. I briefly wondered if I was the cause of her sleepless nights. She was a strong woman, and to see her fall apart so easily left me with a sour taste on my tongue that cloyed in the back of my throat like spoiled milk. _I don’t want to fucking lose you_ , she shouted, her voice cracking between the stuttering sobs that caught in the dark wet of her throat.

I began to understand that she wasn’t talking about the physical act of me leaving. My mother was terrified that I’d become like my father—that I would harness the darkness that lived and breathed inside of me. What she didn’t comprehend was that I already had.

I wanted to spit on the floor at her feet and call her the names that I’d prepared in defense, but I couldn’t frame my lips on the words, couldn’t voice the resonance that lied dormant against the roof of my mouth like the spearmint gum stuck to my teeth.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said, adolescent annoyance hitching my voice into irritation. “What’s for lunch?”

It wasn’t much, but it seemed enough because my mother wiped the tears from her cheeks and straightened herself, nodding. I watched her as she made her way into the kitchen. Her spine curved abnormally due to a break that she suffered as a child, and while I stared at the inadvertent flaw I think I heard her say, _I hope you’re right_. 

* * *

I joined a fight club in the underbelly of Tokyo when I turned thirteen.

I spat on my index finger to shine the pair of boots that I’d stolen two years ago from a boy that dared to challenge me. I crushed his fingers in my fist and kicked him in the ribs until he fell to the ground. His tears mixed with dirt and stained his cheeks the color of the shit I’d told him to eat.

I tore the foil from a half-eaten bar of dark chocolate and tossed the litter to the ground as I bit off a corner of the sweet. It wasn’t bitter enough, unlike the black coffee I’d taken to drinking in the morning, but I didn’t have anything else and I wasn’t interested in eating anything that offered actual substance.

And that’s when I met Hara. He was a scrappy son of a bitch, a tramp of sorts. His hair was a tangled mess that hung down into his eyes. He chewed bubblegum and smoked pot and smelled like the thrift shops I’d frequented a couple years back.

We were pitted against each other on a muggy night, rain dampening the streets at infrequent intervals. He was lanky and didn’t care much for words but he packed a powerful punch. I wouldn’t have admitted it then, but I thought I was invincible, so the pain that shot through my face when his fist connected with my jaw caught me by surprise. I remember laughing and spitting a glob of blood onto the grimy street. “You’ve got balls, kid,” I told him, then I threw my best right hook at him and the fight commenced.

Hara chipped a tooth and I had a nasty bruise forming over my left eye but I stayed to talk to him after the fight. It was something I’d never done before but Hara was a rare commodity and there was something about him that interested me.

“You shouldn’t be out this late at night, kid,” I said. “Your parents might be worried about you.”

“My parents are dead,” Hara said, lighting a cigarette and passing me a flask of something that smelled that woodsy like oak and dry like hay. “It’ll kill the pain.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” I scoffed, pushing his arm away from me as I watched the orange heat of his cigarette glow against the backdrop of night. “Besides, maybe I wanna feel the pain.”

Hara shrugged and took a swig of whatever liquid sloshed around in the silver container. He seemed unimpressed. I liked that about him.

“Same time next week?” he asked, flicking the cancerous remains of his cigarette across the alley to drown in a muddy puddle. “I’d like another chance to pummel your ass.”

“Faggot,” I teased, leaning back against the bricks behind me and crossing my ankles. “What makes you think that I’d bother with you again?”

“Don’t know,” Hara shrugged again. He stepped forward and pinned me against the wall. I didn’t flinch. He shoved his tongue into my mouth, his own cold and wet, tasting of toffee and ash and mint. When he pulled away, the split in my lip tingled and I forgot about the ache in my ribs. He turned his back to me then and walked toward the light at the end of the narrow passage, not sparing me another glimpse.

I walked home, half-confused and half-turned on. It wasn’t necessarily Hara himself that sent blood rushing to my cock, but the pain that lanced through my veins and the heat of brazenness branding my mouth. I laughed and shook the hair out of my eyes. It hurt to breathe and I cursed Hara for his bony elbows and sucker-punches.

I wouldn’t see him again until I entered high school—where I would find out that his parents were, in fact, very alive, and that he also had two brothers. 

* * *

I took a brief interest in psychology sometime between the ages of thirteen and fourteen. I read about sociopathic personality disorders, antisocial and borderline personality disorders, psychopathy and even narcissism. I didn’t find a place in any of their descriptions or scientific names. I didn’t see myself in their abbreviations or compendiums, so I looked further, reading biographies about notorious gangs and crime lords, serial killers, and cult leaders. My interest was short-lived, cut into pieces like the dead earthworms scattering the sidewalk beneath my feet.

I remember my mother whispering angry words about my father when I was a child, hissing something between the straight edges of her teeth as cicadas buzzed in the air. I didn’t know what they meant at the time—I had half the attention span that I do now and an undeniable thirst to be near my father at all times—but as I pieced together fragments of her sentences I distinctly recall _sadist_ being amongst a variety of choice words. I didn’t like those words then, I thought they were ugly and inequitable, but now, they’re bright and colorful, just like the torn butterflies in the jar beside my bed. However, I had a habit of turning the grisliest of dictionaries into words of value, turning them over on my tongue and into something saccharine. Some people called it sarcasm, some cynicism. I called it charm—still do, in fact.

I used that charm to lure a girl into my bed two weeks before my fifteenth birthday. It took all of ten minutes to get out of our clothes and onto my sheets. I fucked her like the men I’d watched on the internet with spiritless eyes and slack-mouthed disinterest. I always thought pornography was overrated—that the participants looked like machines, _that,_ or, half-wits who didn’t have the slightest clue as to what they were doing. I hated the women, attempting to make dulcet sounds as they were pounded into the nearest piece of furniture by a man I knew they couldn’t possibly give two shits about. I never really contemplated my sexuality, thought it a waste of time, but even I considered most of the men too ugly to stomach. What happened to basic standards? I just figured they had to be making decent money and continued on with my life. They didn’t interest me anyway—but I couldn’t help thinking that no amount of money would convince me to fuck Yamada Tarō with his cheap sunglasses and fake tan.

I didn’t know why I was doing it—fucking her like that. She told me she was a virgin—I didn’t believe her then and I don’t believe her now—but she still bled and when I finished I was surprised to find myself unfulfilled. It was different than using my fist, considerably better, but something was lacking. I stared down at her, ignoring the smell of cherry blossoms that floated through my window with the chirping of a sparrow. She wouldn’t look me in the eye and it wasn’t until I realized that she was crying that I felt the heat in my stomach spread to fire in my blood.

The excitement didn’t last long, however. The girls I took back to my bed were all the same: the whispers on their breath, the sweet scents on their skin, even their desperate attempts to win my love, they all left me with the bitterest of tastes. And it wasn’t the sharp, amaroidal taste I enjoyed either. It was sour and pungent and left me wholly unsatisfied.

I ended that month with blood on my hands and the dust of an orange-winged butterfly on my fingertips. I’m not ashamed to admit that I killed something that night, but it’s useless information and I honestly can’t remember much because killing animals just didn’t do it for me.

I went home and scratched zoosadism off my list of possible disorders. Arson was a minor interest, one that was waning with age, and I hadn’t wet the bed since I was three years old, so I considered myself exempt from the _triad of sociopathy_. Had I been younger it might have disappointed me but I was learning to accept the fact that even the broadest of categories had no room for someone like me. 

* * *

I had already known Imayoshi by the time my fifteenth birthday rolled around. The first time I met him I thought that he was nothing more than a fading reminder of who I used to be—but I was wrong. In fact, I couldn’t have been farther from the truth, and when the sudden realization of it dawned on me it felt like a punch to the gut.

I didn’t know whether to admire Imayoshi or despise him with all the hatred I could muster. I would have been lying if I said that I didn’t have enough hostility and malice entombed within my bones to bury him up to his neck in animosity. But something about Imayoshi was different—he had something that made my skin crawl and my subconscious light up like the many acres that were lost in Hiroshima in April of ‘71. If I was fire, then he was water, and the cooler he got, the hotter I became. He was like an itch I couldn’t scratch, even with my jagged nails clotted with blood and the surface of my skin torn, I couldn’t get him out of my bloodstream.

Imayoshi was infecting me. He was the poison my father once referred to, but _I_ was the one being contaminated. Imayoshi was a germ, a parasite, a _virus_ I couldn’t escape.

We didn’t talk often and when we did, our conversations were anything but conventional. We didn’t talk about things that ostensible boys our age talked about. We talked about revenge and violence and politics, of all things. We challenged each other and the deeper we got, the thicker the web we were trapped in became. Imayoshi labeled himself a genius and I countered everything he threw at me. Not once did I consider the fact that he could be testing me—setting me up for some future cataclysm, a downward spiral that would stab me in the back like the many murderers I’d once studied had done to their victims.

One afternoon, Imayoshi— _senpai,_ I called him—happened to run into me on the street. I considered the fact that he’d planned the meeting but it didn’t matter much to me. I didn’t mind his company. Though, I would never admit it aloud. _Save it for your journal_ , I told myself.

We walked side by side, Imayoshi’s hand occasionally brushing my own. I had enough space to put distance between us but I didn’t. There was something about being in Imayoshi’s shadow that made me turn everything over to remonstrance. We talked casually, and despite the fact that I was speaking, the voice inside of my head was eating me alive. The sun caught on Imayoshi’s lenses, turning his glasses opaque as he plastered a lopsided smile on his lips. I wondered then if he was playing me, if he viewed the time he spent with me as a game he’d already won. I clenched my jaw and shattered the unstated rage that crowded the space behind my teeth. There was _something_ about being with Imayoshi that brought the violence out of me.

That night I found a spider in my bed and named it Ichi. 

* * *

Imayoshi once told me that he was skilled in the art of rope bondage. I had no doubt in my mind that he was telling me the truth, in fact, it was rare that I questioned what Imayoshi said to me. Maybe it was stupid, but I felt that in that respect, Imayoshi and I were similar. I felt no need to lie. I wasn’t afraid of judgment, I didn’t shy away from what people thought of me. I felt like lying was a cheap way to get what I wanted. It wasn’t that I _never_ lied, but I liked to consider myself wilier than the amateur cheats and con artists that stippled the same streets I used to make my way around the city.

The thing I found most interesting about Imayoshi was how he introduced me to a world I’d always toed the line of without laying a hand on me. I couldn’t decipher what I wanted then, and even now, if I think about it long enough, I still don’t know what I wanted from him. On several sleepless nights I imagined what it would be like to have raw, impassioned hate-sex with Imayoshi, but I never let my hand stray into my pants—I’d given up underwear at that point—I was merely curious.

Which is how I spent most of my days— _curious_. I had a laundry list of things I wanted to try, and it wasn’t for fear that I didn’t but my ego warned me that I was better than drugs, better than theft, better than the curb crawlers that circled the park two blocks from my school.

Imayoshi taught me about that too—the _johns_ as some countries titled them. It was an artless afternoon, not a cloud in the sky despite the recent maelstrom of rain and wind that lasted four days and flooded parts of Southern Japan. He told me what to watch for, _The tricks would love you_ , he said. I laughed and asked him why, equal parts inquiring and dumbfounded. Imayoshi smiled, the dig of his mouth curving into a line sharp enough to cut. He turned his head up toward the sun and said, _Because you’re different—because you’re pretty_.

I punched him then, and I wasn’t surprised to find him ready for it. He tugged an arm behind my back and shoved me down to the ground, the angle of his knee pressing hard against the small of my back. I could taste the sidewalk on my tongue and feel the heat of a ghostly sunbeam on my cheek. Imayoshi warned me that I’d get worse if I ever punched him again, but we both knew it would happen sooner rather than later. He wasn’t stupid and I wasn’t interested in compliance. 

* * *

Two days later, I found myself taking the long way home. I walked through the park two blocks from my school, listening to tiny sticks break beneath the soles of my boots. They had lost their shine, turned a lackluster black opposite the polished sloe they once were. I had enough money to buy a new pair but I didn’t care much about fashion.

I was buried deep within my thoughts, a grave of dark rumination ten feet deep. I didn’t show it but I nearly lost my shit when a man approached me, his fingers ghosting the bareness of my arm. I prepared myself for a fight but my face remained inscrutable, my eyes fixed on the man’s face with what I hoped to be notable indifference.

I don’t know what made me do it, but I took the time to observe his body and the way he was dressed. He looked emaciated, like he was swimming in his clothes. It was too warm for long-sleeves, but he was sporting a jacket at least two sizes too big for his frame. For a moment, I wondered if he was carrying some sort of weapon beneath all of the extra material. His face was almost scaly, mottled with bumps that resembled acne at first glance, but they were different, like purple scabs that had never fully dried. He had two sores on his mouth and a number of bumpy patches on his cheeks, some giving way to open wounds.

He thrust his hand out in my direction and I could make out six-thousand yen clenched between his fingers. His hand was cracked and pale, purplish brown lesions dotted his skin, some looking like blisters ready to burst. I didn’t know whether to be offended or horrified. I knew the man was teeming with disease and on any other occasion I might have used his weakness to my advantage, but I couldn’t bring myself to interact with him.

I shook my head and pretended innocence as I backtracked, retracing my steps to be rid of the indisposed stranger. I half-expected him to charge at me, but he didn’t. He looked _hurt._ It was a rare occasion—one of very few I’d ever felt in my lifetime—but I could feel sympathy rising in the blood rushing through my veins, now cold with something akin to fear.

Days later I would blame Imayoshi for his sudden appearance. I couldn’t get the image of the man out of my head—couldn’t rid my thoughts of his blistered skin and knobby fingers. He became a thing of my nightmares until I concluded that Imayoshi was, once again, testing me. I knew the likelihood of him actually doing so was nearly nonexistent but it made sleep easier to come by and that was reason enough to lay the responsibility on him. 

* * *

I was sixteen when I first realized that I had become afraid of getting hurt, but I was never afraid of any physical pain. It stemmed from my father’s absence, something I couldn’t seem to overcome. I tried to turn my anger into resentment, turn my pain into contempt, but I couldn't—even as I reminded myself that he never came back, that he never sought custody of me when my mother and I were at odds—I couldn’t hate him.

I hadn’t seen him in years and he was no longer the person who I wanted to become. Still, I couldn’t help but idolize him in some way. He was just…he was everything I had known.

I didn’t recognize what I was feeling and I loathed it. I felt like I was losing control, like I was becoming _weak_ , extremely displaced from the life that I was living.

My mother worked hard and was rarely home. We’d gotten to a place where we understood each other—well, _most_ _of the time_. I knew that her efforts were crafted from good intention, that she was only trying to protect me, to save me from the danger that she knew I was born into. But I couldn’t accept her affection. There was something about being cared for that left me feeling sick and queasy like I was hollowed out and filled with a substance that didn’t belong inside of me.

There was no catalyst, no preemptive indication that I was about to lose my mind. I didn’t even realize that I was walking into my room before I started destroying my belongings. I kicked in a section of my wall, toppled over neat stacks of books and CDs with my fist. I pushed my lamp from the table it sat on and listened to the bulb shatter against the floor. I closed my fist around various trophies and medals I had earned as a child and lobbed them at the wall. They tinkled like my mother’s broken wind chimes and something about the sound triggered the violence crawling through my veins. I shouted in rage and flung open my window. I scooped up as many tangible victories as I could and hurled them through the open framework. I didn’t watch as they littered the ground below like the gold foiled medallions of chocolate I ate as a child. I shoved my pillows off of my mattress and tore my sheets from the bed. I ripped the many posters I’d plastered to my walls to shreds, leaving only corners of glossy paper and thumbtacks in their wake. And when that wasn’t enough, I kicked over the nightstand that sat flush against the side of my bed. It hit the floor with a resounding thud as its contents scattered the floor: papers, various currency, a textbook, and something that caught reflective in the light of my room.

I kicked aside the papers and dropped into a crouch, and it wasn’t until I picked up the knife that my father had given me that I realized how badly I was shaking. “ _Dad_ ,” I whispered around the hard lump in the back of my throat as I fought the urge to call out for him.

A vehicle passed by outside my window as I closed my eyes and imagined myself elsewhere. I reminisced dirty basements and dirty lights, dirty noise and all the _dirty things_ that I had associated with my father. I closed my eyes and let myself go blind to the things that wanted to take me apart. I swallowed the lump in my throat and closed myself to the world, to the people and the places that could bring me heartache. I listened to the voices inside my head, the sounds that held me down every night like the invisible hands that curled around the base of my throat. I closed my mind and swore that I would never open up to anything ever again.

I fell to my knees and the contact should have hurt but it didn’t. And for some reason, suddenly I knew that I’d seen so many things that I shouldn’t have.

I didn’t flinch when damp warmth spread out across my fingers, my father’s knife cutting into the heart of my palm.

I was falling apart and too damn stubborn to admit it. 

* * *

The thrill of crime had finally ground itself out in my blood, fizzled down to a final spark before snuffing itself out entirely. It wasn’t surprising, I’d seen it coming for a while. I’d moved onto greater things: namely destroying people, both literally and figuratively. I’d created my own fight club of sorts, a perilous web that spun out into several directions, each leading to a greater demise than the last. I’d drawn blood and broken bones—destroyed friendships and devastated relationships. Whatever I could do to dispose of the cretins and the morons that existed within my reach, the trash that littered the streets that I now called my own; I would use anything I could to annihilate the honest and the respectable, the _good_. I wanted to tear them down, to grind their lily-white souls into the dirt with my bootheels.

And I could have because no one ever _noticed_ , no one stopped me from crushing their malignant hearts in the weight of my fist. I lived on the edge without consequence or repercussion. I was starting to understand what it meant to be free.

I can still remember the look of anguish on Kiyoshi’s face and the sound of his voice when he fell to the gym floor, clutching his wounded knee. Contrary to the man I’d met in the park, Kiyoshi became a regular appearance in my _dreams_. Instead of waking up in damp sheets and cold sweat, I’d wake with heat on my skin and slick coating the weight of my flushed cock.

I had finally made sense of the word my mother used when I was a child. _Sadist._ And it now held such greater meaning to me than it had before I could parse its definition. The term alone was precious to me, something I could hold close to my chest. Something I could be proud of. Something I could _hone_.

As I stood at the corner of a busy street, watching a building go up in flames, I couldn’t imagine being afraid of fire because I was learning to love the burn. 

* * *

I ran into Imayoshi six months after his graduation, an event I didn’t bother attending. He sent no invitation, I sent no regards.

I ventured to East Shinjuku on a whim. I had read an article on the Golden Gai and heard enough rumors to push my growing interest into motion. It was a small area; a sub-neighborhood overrun by dilapidated two-story houses packed in neat rows. The alleys there were barely wide enough for one person to squeeze through, but upon my first visit I stopped and watched a guy get head from a girl as seedy and slum-like as the surrounding area. He flashed me his middle finger and I stuck my tongue out at him before voicing a distinct, “Fuck you.”

I didn’t bother with names as I passed a number of establishments lining the street. I stuffed my hands into my pockets and wedged my way into a shabby building, the hinges on the front door groaning in protest as I fit myself into the dim-lit building. Despite the condition of the bar, the prices were high and I didn’t spot a single person who didn’t look either dangerous or wealthy. I was halfway to the bartender when I heard a familiar voice on the syrupy drawl of my name. I didn’t have to turn around to frame the owner of that voice—his face was already visible inside my head.

“Hello, senpai,” I said, slow and sweet, mocking. “What brings you here?” I turned around then and idly made my way over to his table. Only half of his face was visible, the rest was cast in shadow like an ominous cloud that spelled impending doom. I kicked out a chair and spun it around before plopping down against its wooden frame, my arms draped over its back. “I didn’t expect to see you again.” The corners of my mouth lifted, flashing him a white slash of a smile that reflected back at me in the glint of his glasses. “I missed you,” I added, sarcasm dripping from my teeth that reminded me of the poison he’d injected me with when we were younger.

“I’m flattered,” Imayoshi purred and lifted a stubby glass to his lips. “Perhaps I should have contacted you sooner.” He tilted his chin up slightly and tipped honeyed liquid into his mouth. I watched his throat work on a swallow before bothering with a reply.

“Don’t be,” I said, my voice cold, sharp and carved out of stone. “And you didn’t contact me at all.”

Imayoshi set down the glass and licked several droplets from his lips, his hands cradling the mock crystal. “Is that so? I could have sworn that I sent you an invitation.”

“Perhaps it got _lost_ in the mail,” I said, unblinking. I could feel agitation creeping into my veins. I dug my fingernails into my palms. “You know, _senpai_ , you should be careful. One of these days, someone’s going to lay you in the ground.”

“You think?” Imayoshi asked, spinning the glass between his hands. “We’re all going to die one day, Hanamiya. I suggest you get used to the idea.”

“I think I understand death a fuck-lot more than you do,” I spat, ready to rise from my chair and forget the entire trip.

“Calm down.” Imayoshi’s motion turned to stillness as he pressed his weight against the edge of the damaged table. I lowered my gaze and focused my stare on a scar, a burn contained in the table’s once-polished grain. “So you’re edgier than I am,” Imayoshi jeered, “but there’s a lot that you _don’t_ understand.”

“Let me guess,” I scoffed, “that’s what you’re here for?”

“Precisely,” Imayoshi answered, grinning. “Here.” He passed me a napkin, withered and damp around the edges. There was writing in its center, neat and untouched by the wet that soiled its perimeter.

“What’s this?” I asked, rereading the black address etched into the white cloth.

“If my memory serves me well, I distinctly recall that you used to be good friends with curiosity. I reckon you’ll find out soon enough.” Imayoshi pushed his weight away from the table and rose into standing. “I best get going. I’m meeting someone.” He tossed a folded bill onto the scored tabletop and nodded at me once, a quick gesture that was as insincere as one of my _heartfelt_ apologies. “Sorry about that invitation.”

“Fuck off, senpai,” I muttered, tucking the napkin into my jacket’s front pocket.

I watched him make his way through the bar and when I could no longer make out the outline of his silhouette, I pocketed his tip and headed in the direction of the bathroom.

I never did find out how he knew I was going to be there. 

* * *

It turns out that Imayoshi had more connections than I thought possible.

I followed the address he’d given me to a sleazy looking S&M club and laughed out loud as I stepped over a threshold under the buzzing hum of the neon sign above me. My breath turned visible in the cool night air and I wondered if this was a set-up—my thoughts wandered, projecting a filmstrip of possible outcomes on the forefront of my mind.

“Fuck it,” I grumbled to myself. My hands were numb with cold and though I was loath to admit it, Imayoshi was right. I _was_ curious.

I entered the club and let my eyes digest the scene. The walls were made to look like stone, a conspicuous attempt at imitating the interior of a castle dungeon. There was a bar across the room but the lighting was obnoxiously dark and I had to squint to see. The room was bathed in a blue glow and despite the nebulous atmosphere, I was pleased to find that it wasn’t a club bursting with flashing lights and de trop pop music.

I proceeded further into the club, my gaze catching on various pieces of furniture: a table with straps meant for bondage, a spanking bench, a split-seat chair with arm restraints, two beds that sat on opposite sides of the dance floor, both complete with ankle and wrist straps and rigging for other subjugation. There were jail cells lining what I believed to be the west wall. On the east, a glass chamber housed a St. Andrew’s Cross. I tipped my head back to look at the ceiling, unsurprised to find an assortment of hooks above me. Next to the prison wall sat a row of cupboards, some left half-open to reveal the contents inside. I narrowed my eyes and made out a variety of cleaning materials, presumably for wiping down the furniture after use.

My mind was reeling, there was too much to take in. My eyes wouldn’t focus entirely, forcing me to look through an ineffectual haze. I could feel the pulse of music beneath my feet, matching the rhythm of my heart as I tried, and failed, to absorb all of the sounds around me. I could detect the crack of a whip, the _whoosh_ of overheated air followed by the _thwack_ of leather against skin. I could discern whispers and hisses of pleasure, the clink of two glasses touching, the slide of skin on skin contact. I inhaled heat and could almost taste sweat on my tongue, salt-damp perspiration that didn’t belong to me.

I pushed my way through the idle sway of occupants, careful not to touch them. I couldn’t have cared less about their personal space— _I_ didn’t want to feel them. I was never fond of having people close to me. I stalked through the crowd until I reached a hallway. The blue glow highlighting the dance floor faded into a sooty purple, underscoring the scent of smoke that was coating the air like a thick layer of ash. I saw a line of rooms, each with a sign on the doors that lead inside, bold black letters spelling out their theme. The row started with a medical exam room, currently unoccupied. I looked inside and had to blink several times to adjust my eyes. The light was blinding in comparison to the rest of the club, fluorescent and bright white. There were trays of various instruments, IV stands, and an exam table placed in its center. A white lab coat hung on the wall, all four of which were stainless steel. The room actually _smelled_ of antiseptic. I felt like I’d just walked into a hospital.

The next room looked similar to the one I’d spent most of my time occupying in middle school. It was slightly old-fashioned, complete with both a teacher’s desk and student’s. There was a blackboard on the wall and a computer on the desk that sat at the front, its wood finish cherry oak. There were two people in the room, exhibitionists no doubt. I paid them no mind until I realized that it wasn’t the man in control, but the woman. I laughed out loud, unable to contain my amusement. The woman scowled in my direction and I flashed her my middle finger before moving on. I wondered if the webcam was in use and if their entire exchange was being broadcast to the twisted fucks who paid to watch the shit people did in their free time. I knew I wouldn't—people like them couldn’t hold my interest. Though, anyone who could listen to his cries of pained-pleasure without laughing deserved some kind of commendation.

I walked past several more rooms, already losing enthusiasm. The signs I passed read: Treasure Island, Egyptian Palace, New York City, Space, The Dungeon, The Alley. I stopped reading and fell into my usual slump. The speakers pulsed and I could hear them sizzling and crackling above my head like an incoherent voice was trying to captivate my attention. I exhaled what breath I held in my lungs and pushed through a metal door beneath a glowing red EXIT sign, questioning how much disease inhabited the club and if I’d contracted something.

I raised my head, expecting to be in some back alley with bottles littering the ground and trash nestled against the chain-link fence that blocked off some unforeseen route I wasn’t interested in taking. But I wasn't—I was in another room. It was an open space, but its square footage was enough to swallow the entirety of the accommodation I just exited whole. It lacked the ambiance of the club, far less prolific and ten times grittier. I felt like I was standing in the middle of a grungy studio apartment. The floor was crafted out of concrete that left grit in the soles of my boots. The room was bathed in red and the music sounded like the purr of some underground industrial band I couldn’t name. I liked it.

I walked deeper inside and listened to the dissonance of those around me. The people in that room felt _real_. There were no neat panoplies; no one exhibited caution or skepticism. The wails and pleas that echoed off of the walls cried pleasure and screamed pain. It was authentic. Their arousal, their agony—it was almost tangible. Not once did I hear a safe word being spoken. Not from the woman being flogged to what appeared to be the greatest extent of her physical boundaries, nor the woman wrapped up to her neck in cellophane. Not from the man suspended from the ceiling, his toes inches from the floor as he swung gently on the hooks buried in his upper back, and not from the man with a fist up his ass and piss on his face. I didn’t know where to look. It felt like I had entered a macabre circus and I _loved_ it.

I stayed for a while, watching various displays of torture and acceptance—pleasure and pain—dominance and submission. I ran my fingers through the hair of a woman crawling around on all fours, bound by the collar around her throat and the leash in her master’s hand. She was naked and bloodied, the welts on her back a deep purple. She nuzzled my hand and ran her tongue over the toe box of my boot. I spit on a woman—foreign to Japan—when she begged me to. I learned how to properly flog someone and the basics of bondage. At a distance they looked cruel and vicious, but they weren’t, they were cordial and inviting and _happy_.

It was past midnight when I started for what I presumed to be the _real_ exit when a man put his hand on my shoulder. I stiffened and turned around, my eyes darkening on the warning I’d hoped to convey. He didn’t recoil. Instead, he asked me if I’d be interested in scarification. I told him that I wasn’t a masochist and he smiled at me. He reminded me of Imayoshi.

I still don’t recall how it happened it exactly. I don’t remember agreeing to his request but by the time I had started in the direction of home, I had a spider carved into my arm beneath a makeshift bandage, the blood dappling the gauze its web. 

* * *

I met Hara’s mother a week later. I’d never met a parent other than my own before, at least, not with a proper introduction, and I wouldn’t have if not for Hara’s constant nagging to visit him at home. I told him that I wasn’t interested but he persisted. I jabbed him in the ribs and he stomped on my foot. Eventually, I capitulated to his request, but only when he promised to never ask me again.

She was free-spirited and outspoken—completely unlike what I’d imagined her to be. She shook my hand when I passed over the threshold between his hallway and living room. She didn’t hide her eyes like Hara did but they resembled each other. She looked far too young to have three children, so I couldn’t fathom how old she must have been when she gave birth to the oldest—now twenty.

She told me to call her _Mom_ and pressed a kiss to my cheek. She smelled like fresh-cut lilacs and laundry soap. She asked if I wanted something to drink—I told her no.

Hara gave me a tour of his home—small but comfortable and slightly unkempt—then led me back into the living room. His mother was sitting on the couch smoking a joint. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was because I couldn’t imagine my mother smoking pot, much less in front of company. She waved at me and held out the joint in an offering. I shook my head but Hara trotted over to her like a puppet on a string. He pinched the rolled cannabis between his fingers before lifting it to his lips. He said something about meddlesome neighbors and his mother sprung off of the couch she was occupying and ran to the window. She lifted her shirt and flashed her small tits at the prying bystanders and blew them a kiss. _Fuck off_ , she yelled and Hara laughed.

I wanted to think that she was outlandish, a screwball that was clearly smoking more than weed, but I couldn’t. Something existed within her that I couldn’t dislike. And when she turned on an agglomeration of heavy metal and cheap porn I found myself accepting her hand when she asked me to dance. 

* * *

My fascination with death was nothing new. In truth, my attraction had grown tenfold and despite statistics, I found myself thinking about death far more than sex and even considered it more interesting than fucking. The spider that I’d acquired from the seedy club had gotten infected and I found it nearly impossible not to pick at the scab. I treated it with a topical antiseptic and peroxide and within a week the swelling started to subside. I still found myself scratching at the crust that formed on my skin but it was less satisfying than the burn that followed pouring rubbing alcohol over the wound.

I started to delve into articles and books on sadomasochism, speculating the possibility that I was split down the middle like those described in fine print and neat lettering.

I was sitting in my room alone. The moon was undoubtedly high in the sky but I needed the light from both of my lamps for all the good it did. I crossed my legs and pressed my elbows in against my knees as I leaned forward, twirling my father’s knife between my fingers. I didn’t believe in coping mechanisms and I thought that therapists were full of bullshit, pandering for money and making their living from the poor hacks who needed someone to _talk_ _to_. I wasn’t like them. I didn’t need someone to talk to. I didn’t feel _sad_. I wasn’t numb or distressed or fighting unbearably negative thoughts. I wasn’t interested in turning my emotional pain into physical pain. I just wanted to watch my skin run red. I wanted the scars and the bruises and the sexual gratification of true pain. I wanted the high, the adrenaline, the fucking godspeed to do whatever the hell I wanted without consequence. I had earned that right.

I stopped twirling the cold steel between my fingers and without pause, I sliced through the pale meat of my forearm. The blood didn’t come immediately and I had the knife poised in mid-air ready to make another cut but then the coppery spill I had grown to love gushed out of the wound and spilled onto the dark of my bedspread.

I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the straight incision and for a moment I thought I could see underneath my skin. I felt alive but some deep-seated part of me was fighting against what I’d just done. My heart began to hammer in my chest, my pulse twitched rapidly, and I couldn’t see clearly for the shadows swamping my vision. I knew I was intoxicated, that I was no different than a junkie living for the next high. I was addicted to pain and there was no turning back. 

* * *

I was eighteen when the accident happened. I was still living with my mother but our relationship had grown strained again and we barely found time in our busy lives for each other. I think maybe she noticed all of the scars that had started appearing on my arms—that maybe she was disgusted or felt that she was so beyond helping me that she’d given up trying. She was gone more than she was home and I was starting to think that I was the reason for her leaving. I didn’t care.

I was thumbing through some hackneyed manual titled _Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders_ when I stumbled upon a list of paraphilias. I tapped my thumb against my knee in an erratic beat as I read about hypoxyphilia. I pressed my tongue between my teeth and bit down until I tasted blood—chewing on my bottom lip didn’t cut it anymore.

I had grown so bored with the mundane ritual of my life that I half-considered climbing onto the roof and jumping off to see how badly my body would break. I refrained. Instead, I ventured into the dining room and retrieved one of the chairs that I’d always despised. I carried it back into my bedroom and placed it at the end of my bed. I glared at it as if it were real and capable of understanding how much I hated having it in my bedroom. I rifled through my closet until I found an old sheet. I began fashioning myself a makeshift noose.

I don’t remember much beyond stepping onto the chair and wrapping the bleached cotton around my neck—but I get the sense that I now know how it feels to fly.

I wasn’t trying to kill myself. I was reaching out for death, seeking a thrill, but I never intended for it to go so far. Though, the cuts making abstract patterns on my skin did little to convince the medics otherwise.

I spent four weeks in a mental institution, hiding pills in the corners of my mouth and selling them to patients half as lucid as myself.

That’s where I met another stranger—another person who would wedge themselves into the pieces of my puzzled life. That’s where I met _you_. 

* * *

In the beginning, I didn’t know how to feel about you. My initial reaction was to shove past you on my way to the music room because _daily_ _social activity was required for future release_. I pretended the screams and the unintelligible shouts that filled the halls were part of some sick fantasy I’d dreamed up. I imagined that the lunatics who walked those same halls were victims and that I had besmirched each and every one of them.

I quickly learned that I was far from the most extreme person within the white-walled prison I was living in. Aiko was as insane as the look in Fumiya’s eyes, a burn victim who started himself on fire after his twin was killed in a car crash. He claimed that he would murder us in our sleep and that he’d taken up chewing on glass as a hobby. Aiko claimed that she was sacrificed, a martyr that was afflicted by stigmata. I didn’t believe her, but I found her more interesting than some.

It became glaringly obvious who really belonged in the institution and who had been committed by means no greater than abandonment or desperation. I didn’t spend much time getting to know others but their stories spread through the halls like the bland peanut butter that I ate on stale bread four days a week. Gakuto believed himself capable of summoning Satan while Eisuke had convinced himself that he’d been behind mass genocide, when in truth, he had grandiose dreams that he couldn’t separate from reality. Itsumi cut off the tips of her fingers and fed them to her deceased dog, convinced that doing so would bring him back to life. Megumi was a rape victim, her own father the perpetrator of the crime. She had gotten pregnant and attempted to hack apart her genitalia when she suffered a miscarriage.

I didn’t connect with any of them. I didn’t even try. I wasn’t like them. I wasn’t crazy or mislead. I wasn’t delusional or paranoid. _I. Just. Liked. Pain._ But like you, I felt that my mother had put me in the hospital to be rid of me—to take a vacation from the nightmare that I’d become. 

* * *

We always watched when someone new was brought in. Kyōji was a frequenter, an _in-and-out_ , some people called him. I never did find out what landed him in the hospital in the first place.

It was Friday evening when the pigs brought him back in—claiming he’d found a way out of the hospital again. I drew up a mental reminder to talk to him later. I watched him struggle against his bonds and spit at the fatter of the two pigs as they led him down the hallway. One of the nurses said that he was to be gagged if he did it again. I laughed.

I woke on Saturday and climbed out of bed, not bothering to get dressed before making my way to his room. I knocked on the door twice and when he didn’t answer I kicked it open and made my way inside. It was unlocked but I always had a love for dramatics. He was lying face-down on his bed and subsequent to seeing him I was filled with a cold sense of dread. I closed his door behind me, wondering how long I had before the next round of _checks_. I walked to his bed and rolled him over. His face was pale and clammy, his eyes unblinking. His body was limp, and his fingernails and lips had turned blue. I checked for a pulse but I knew I wouldn’t find one.

I stared down at him for a long moment, then pulled the thin sheet balled up against the wall over his ashen frame.

I returned to his door without looking back. He was someone else’s problem now. 

* * *

There was something cold and blank behind your smile and I couldn’t keep myself from staring at the shape of your lips. I didn’t know what you had but I was able to tolerate your presence more than the others in the institution. Even when you openly admitted that you’d grown infatuated with me, I could still find comfort in our conversations and the silences in between. I suppose, in a way, you reminded me of my mother. And not in some twisted fucked up sense—not in the way that Osamu jerked himself off to the picture of his sister that sat beside his bed for that very purpose. It wasn’t exactly sympathy either, but there was something about you that made me feel… _safe_ …and I hadn’t allowed myself emotional comfort since the day my father left. I had given him my soul, had worn my carpet thin from the times that I paced the span of my room under the delusion that _he’d be home soon_. And I knew the truth, I did, but I continued to talk to myself and look up to him like I’d find him somewhere in the stars. I guess I just wanted something to believe in.

But you made me see things in a different light. You didn’t change me and you didn’t try to. You had a way with words, an eloquent way of expressing yourself regardless of the topic. You could tell someone to fuck off and it would sound like a lullaby. I asked you if you were from a perfect world—a world that had disposed of me a long time ago and you laughed in my face as if I’d told humanity’s best joke. You never did answer me but something told me that you weren’t, that you suffered through obstacles just like I had.

You once told the nurses that I didn’t need their drugs, that I didn’t need to be someone else. You smiled politely and told them that I needed to be saved from myself and there wasn’t a goddamn thing they could do about it.

I didn’t disagree. 

* * *

During my final week in the hospital, you turned my world upside down and left me with a feeling in my gut that I spent three days over-analyzing. I felt like I’d been amputated, cut off from my creed and lost in translation and no amount of elucidation was going to unravel the tangle of thoughts inside my head.

You followed me into the men’s restroom and kissed me as I pissed into a stained urinal. You didn’t care about the scent of chocolate on my breath or the fact that I was holding my flaccid cock in a hand covered in bruises. You set a crown of flowers on my head and said: _a daisy chain for the Antichrist himself_. Then you stuck three Valium into my back pocket and walked right out of the room as if the entire exchange was part of our normal routine.

I returned the kiss later that night and even as the nurses pulled us apart, ushering us in the directions of our respective rooms I couldn’t help but shout, “I’m fucking you tomorrow.”

You laughed and flashed me a _fuck you_ before waggling your tongue between your middle and index fingers. _Looking forward to it_ was your reply.

We never did have sex. I thought about it and it wasn’t that I didn’t want to, but for the first time in my life, I actually respected a woman other than my mother. Something inside of me didn’t want to ruin that. I don’t know why, and I probably never will, but I felt an inherent need to protect you.

I suppose I realized it then, but it was too hard for me to accept. 

* * *

I had two days left in the hospital and for as much as I wanted to get the fuck out of that shithole, I felt like I was leaving something behind—like I hadn’t finished a critical task and the framework of my entire existence depended on whatever burden had turned the constant tension in my shoulders to oppressive weight.

You made your fingers into a makeshift frame and pretended to take pictures of me. “Smile, baby,” you said, laughter light on your lips.

“I hate pictures,” I snapped, closing the book balanced on my knees.

“But you could have been a model,” you told me, pressing your hands against the tops of my thighs as you lowered yourself to the floor. You picked up the paperback in my lap and scanned its cover before setting it aside, your head taking up the place where it previously rested.

“If you tell me that I’m pretty I’ll have to hurt you,” I said, unaware that I was already working my fingers through your hair.

“I was going to go with tall, dark, and handsome. You’re not pretty…you spend too much of your time brooding. You’re too menacing to be pretty,” you said. “Not to mention your eyebrows. If we stood you in the middle of a field we’d never have to worry about vermin again—forget scarecrows—you’re the next best thing.”

If you had been anyone else I might have punched you for that but I laughed instead, amusement framing the shape of my mouth as you fingered the hole in my jeans above my right knee. “I was thinking that you’re too smart to be in here but I’m retracting the adulation.”

“That hurts,” you said, picking up your head to look me in the eye. It was refreshing, something that people didn’t do with frequency. “But the thing is” –you pushed yourself up onto your knees– “you wouldn’t spend so much time with me if you thought I was stupid.” You lifted your arms and pressed your fingers against my cheeks. I expected to recoil in reflexive response but I didn’t. “Hanamiya Makoto, you are too fucking judgmental.” You leaned forward and pulled my face toward your own. I closed my eyes and you kissed my eyelids in sequence, the right first, then the left. “You are an asshole. An arrogant prick.” Your mouth ghosted the shape of my nose. “You’re a horrible person and I’m irrevocably in love with you.” You fit your lips against the shape of my own and before I could fully process the intimacy of the gesture you were walking away. 

* * *

The night before my release was unseasonably cool and I remember shivering as I sat on your bedroom floor. You had clothes and magazines and torn pamphlets strewn from one corner of the room to the other. You told me that you were an organized person, but the mess was a constant thorn in the side of your least favorite nurse and the sacrifice was well worth your discomfort.

That night you signed a picture of yourself in fancy script and scrawled a message to me on the back. You pressed it into my hand and made me promise that I’d write to you until you got released.

All I could do was nod because the words I wanted to say were too intimate and I couldn’t form them into coherency. I reached out to stroke your cheek but my arm felt weighted and broken. I closed my hand into a fist and you kissed my knuckles before I could draw them away.

We fell asleep on your floor, your head on my chest and an arm draped across my stomach. It was far from the best sleep I’d ever gotten but I wouldn’t have changed a single thing about that night.

For some reason, the nurses left us alone and when I woke in the morning, your nose buried in the crook of my neck and your fingers clutching the fabric of my shirt, I realized that I had feelings for you. Not only that, but they were so strong that they eclipsed the pain threading through the angle of my spine.

I was fucking terrified. 

* * *

My mother picked me up just before noon. There was a brief moment where I’d wished that it was Hara’s mother instead of my own. I plopped down in the front seat of her Subaru BRZ. She had purchased it with my father’s money and I always hated that car. She climbed inside and we said nothing as I opened my journal to stare at the picture of you I’d tucked inside along with a lock of your hair.

“Did you make any friends?” my mother asked, her eyes cast sideways to glance at the photo. I ignored her and wedged my left foot beneath my right knee. The gap between my legs made a triangle and I wanted to crawl inside of the leather seat visible in that space and disappear into another world.

We sat at a red light in silence, the stillness like a cancer grown between us with no cure. I exhaled a heated sigh and pressed my head back against the headrest behind me.

The light turned green and my mother pressed the toe of her heel on the accelerator. At that moment, a delivery truck sped through the intersection and narrowly missed colliding with my mother’s car by what had to be only mere inches. She blared the horn while throwing out an arm against my chest, an attempt to safeguard me against possible harm.

“You fucking asshole!” she shouted, leaning her head out of the window. “Watch where you’re going, cocksucker!” The car behind us honked and she flashed the driver her middle finger in the rear-view mirror before driving forward in the direction of home.

After a moment’s calm, I turned to her and said, “Do you feel better?”

She pulled her lips into a tight line and scowled. “A little,” she barked.

“I didn’t know you that in you,” I told her. “I’m proud of you.”

“Oh shut up,” she said, laughing quietly. “Are you hungry? Do you want me to pick up something up to eat?”

I shook my head. “No. Let’s just go home.” 

* * *

I waited until the sun was asleep and the stars were a fanfare of muted cornets before I made my way outside, my journal in hand. Your picture sat on my bedside table, the hair I’d kept taped to the note you’d scrawled on the back. I could feel my mother’s eyes on me but I didn’t care. I sat cross-legged in the middle of the concrete sidewalk that led up to our porch, the journal I’d stopped writing in years ago at my feet.

A letter sat at the foot of my bed, sealed inside an envelope I’d taken from my mother’s desk. It was addressed to you, the hospital’s location scribbled across the front. You had asked me if I’d have coffee with you sometime and I couldn’t formulate an answer. I think I loved you then—I think I still do, but I couldn’t commit myself to a relationship yet. I wasn’t ready. I was too afraid of letting myself go. After an unreasonable amount of time to think it over, I agreed to coffee, the answer written in permanent sarcasm on the white pages I’d stuffed into the envelope. I thought about you then, my hair an inky curtain around the sharp angle of my jaw as I opened my journal and struck a match.

I watched the pages burn and imagined you dancing in the smoke that swirled up into the night air. I heard the front door open and the quiet shuffle of my mother’s feet as she joined me outside. All at once, I felt that we’d both been left in stitches and that we needed time to heal. She touched my shoulder and I sat motionless and quiet, hypnotized by the flames flittering at my feet.

“I know it’s going to take time for you to forgive me, and maybe you never will” –she squeezed my shoulder and fell into a crouch at my side–“but I need you to know that I will never give up on you. I love you, Makoto. No matter how much you push me away, I will _always_ love you.”

I wanted to smack her hand away and call her a liar. I wanted to crush her beneath the weight I’d carried on my shoulders since the day my father abandoned me—because that’s what he did. I wanted to shout up at the sky until my throat turned red and raw, until the stars fizzled out like the dreams of who I once wanted to become—the man that would make my mother proud.

Instead—and I still don’t know why I did it—I placed my hand over the pale soft of her own and said: “Just don’t fucking leave me like Dad did.”

At that moment, I pretended that I was strong, that I had the world at my feet and that I wasn’t reaching out to her with every shred of humility I had left—that I _really_ didn’t need her.

But I wasn’t strong and I needed her so fucking badly.

“Mom,” I said, my voice cracking between hopelessness and vehemence. “I missed you.”


End file.
